Chapter 322: Falling Stars
At Harvest Orchard.
As usual, the one receiving Sonya today was the senior member of the Claw-Stretching Club, Mifa.
After selling her recent harvest from the Virtual World, Sonya suddenly fell silent. Mifa didn't rush her. Instead, she quietly savored the rare moment of solitude with her.
After a long while, Sonya exhaled softly. "I want to buy the Heart Pen Miracle... are there any promotions or discounts lately?"
Mifa would have loved to give the Swordswoman a free pass, but she lacked the authority. "No. It's strictly the original price of fifteen Gold Coins. You might want to wait for the start of the intercollegiate league. There are usually discounts during that period."
Sonya sighed, her face clouded with reluctance. "Then I'll take it at full price."
Just as Mifa began preparing the knowledge device, a series of continuous cracking sounds cut through the air. It sounded like something vital was splintering apart. Sonya turned and saw a fruit drop from one of the orchard trees behind her. Its transparent crystal shell shattered with a sharp pop. The spirit stored within opened its sleepy eyes for a fleeting second before dissolving into mist.
It was not the first. Nor would it be the last.
Pop. Pop. Pop.
One after another, the fruits fell. One after another, they shattered and vanished.
The losses were not yet massive, but the situation clearly exceeded what any student could calmly accept. This was the Harvest Orchard of Sword and Roses University, one of Cailleach's most vital spirit trading hubs. These trees were the miraculous handiwork of Legendary sorcerers. Yet now, the spirits were seemingly abandoning their homes.
Soon, they no longer had the luxury of worrying over a minor anomaly.
A massive shadow swept over them. The orchard's glass walls allowed the outside light to pass through completely, and as the girls looked up, they faced the sky directly.
The stars were falling.
Tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands of stars were plummeting. Among them were the three great luminaries, the brilliant Moon Star, and even the seventy-two constellations beloved by the academy girls.
Yet, they did not fall completely. The sky caught them.
They struck the heavens like trapped balls, denting the vast blue into uneven hollows. The sky resembled an elastic membrane resisting a great impact, or a giant bubble straining to enclose the entire world. Countless questions rose in the minds of every observer, swelling like bubbles ready to burst.
There was no commotion. No chaos. Not even a scream.
Cailleach, Yabacore, Magus, Metis, Myst, Aphon, the entire Starry Kingdom came to a standstill. Millions looked up at the sky, their worldviews quietly collapsing and reforming in the silence. Then...
Pop.
Perhaps there was a sound, perhaps not. But afterward, everyone insisted there had been. After all, when the lights went out, there was always a sound. How could the sky turning off possibly be silent?
At that moment, every star extinguished at once. Light vanished, plunging the world into a darkness so absolute it seemed to swallow the screams of the living before they could be voiced.
The darkness did not last even a second. Out of the void, a single strand of blue light appeared.
A female sorcerer in a hooded robe stood there. Deep-blue runes circled her as she walked, each step rippling through the air like water. Any noble with a shred of basic knowledge would have recognized her as a priestess-like figure from ancient ceremonial rituals.
She walked along a staircase of darkness, guiding the gazes of millions upward, step by step, toward the heavens. When she reached a high platform, she knelt and clasped her hands in prayer. The deep-blue flames on her body flared with wildfire intensity, igniting Cailleach, and then the entire Starry Kingdom.
Sonya was no exception. Blue flames wrapped around her, hardening into the shape of armor. Looking around, she saw that most people's flames were chaotic and formless. Only a few had defined shapes, and those looked familiar. They resembled the Star Swordsmen and Star Archers she had seen before.
Her own flame armor, however, was unique. It resembled both a Star Swordsman and the Star Archer form she had seen the Watcher wear.
Before she could observe any further, the world changed again.
As if responding to the burning earth, the sky began to move. A falling star suddenly cracked open with deep indigo light. The sky's elastic force surged upward, snapping it back into the heavens.
Then a second star followed, then a third, and a fourth.
The stars behaved like schoolchildren caught peeking through a window. Discovered by the teacher, they scrambled back to their seats in a panic. When even the luminaries returned to their thrones like class leaders, the sky finally brightened once more.
The morning luminaries, the warm sunlight, the lazy drifting clouds, and the clear blue sky... The brief blackout and the falling stars felt like nothing more than a grand illusion.
However, when Sonya turned her gaze toward the east, she saw something that had not existed moments before. A towering white structure, hundreds of meters high, had appeared out of nowhere. Its summit aligned perfectly with the spot where the female sorcerer had knelt in the darkness.
There was no doubt. The sorceress was still there, offering her prayers for all living beings. The white tower was a staircase to the heavens, constructed in a matter of seconds by the hands of Legendary sorcerers.
For some reason, a name surfaced in Sonya's mind. Star Prayer Devotee.
"Mifa."
The work-study student was still struggling to reconstruct her sense of reality. "Huh?"
Sonya pointed at the shattered crystal fruit behind her. "Do you know what that fallen spirit was?"
Despite being slightly puzzled, Mifa quickly checked her device and answered without hesitation, "That's the Two-Winged spirit, Meteor."
"Meteor? Which class does it belong to?"
"Light Class," Mifa said, scanning the entry. "But..."
"But?"
"The way Meteor manifests isn't through light, but through physical form," Mifa explained. "But because it resembles starlight, which is traditionally categorized under the Light Class, it was classified there as well."
Spirits rarely fit into neat systems. In truth, sorcery classes were merely labels that sorcerers imposed on themselves. They were relative, incomplete, and often arbitrary. Many spirits shared characteristics of multiple systems, while others defied classification entirely, much like the Watcher's Substitute spirit.
Spirits preceded the systems. Theory always lagged behind practice, sometimes by centuries. For instance, the Prophecy and Fate Classes were long believed to exist, and related spirits had been discovered, yet a complete system for them had never been established.
Sonya thought for a moment. "So... Meteor should actually belong to the Star Class, right?"
"There is no such thing as Star Class," Mifa replied, a hint of amusement in her voice. "The stars are too distant. How could sorcerers possibly harness them?"
Sonya glanced back up at the sky and murmured, "They don't seem that far away anymore."
The stars have fallen. The Star Prayer Devotee. The shattered spirits. The Incarnation of the Stars stolen by the Legion of Heroes, and the Incarnation of Secrets obtained by the Watcher... No wonder the Hero Commander had refused to kill him. No wonder she had used such a convoluted contract just to ensure she could take his Conjuring spirit. So, the so-called Incarnations were actually...
Suddenly, a wave of nausea surged through Sonya. Her vision began to deconstruct.
Mifa's torso seemed to spill outward, and the sunlight collapsed into jagged geometric blocks. The fruit trees twisted into stacks of textual tombstones, the sky dissolved into a black ocean, and the luminaries grew countless eyes and mouths. From each of them, a thin, luminous thread extended upward, like fishing lines cast into an upside-down sea.
She blinked, and everything snapped back to normal. The world had not changed, but Sonya's perception had.
She understood the reason clearly. With that two-faced, unpredictable insect called the Watcher around, such distortions were far too easy to trigger. When reality finally shed its disguise to reveal its multicolored darkness, Sonya's perception resonated with the Virtual World's response.
[Concept Secret Poison]
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